Thoughts on sustainable landscape design intended to demystify! We all seek the same thing for our gardens: beauty, function and a gentle footprint on the land. One-half practitioner, one-half teacher, one-half low-brow humor. Come on in...

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Rated R - Horticultural Chain Saw Massacres

This blog is rated for Mature Audiences. Send the little ones out to play.

There are people out there who must hate plants and live to see their demise. There's no other explanation I can think of for the hideous photos you are about to see. Perhaps they were startled by a swaying willow tree when they were a child, or told gruesome stories about a mean thorny rose bush that eats little children. Why else would people do things like this to perfectly innocent plants?

I posit a few explanations...

No. 1: People who get paid to garden are actually plant janitors who feel that if they own pruning tools, they are obliged to use them regardless of the aesthetic results.

Fer instance...

(stub cuts, cylinders and blobs, oh my!)

...or this...

(started life as a birch tree, but something went terribly wrong)

No. 2: Rather than install plants after first considering their ultimate size, then placing them so they can grow unfettered as nature intended, someone thinks it would be fun to indiscriminately plant them into any spot in the garden, only later to be "modified" to fit the space (again ignoring the aesthetic result).

For example...

(Algerian Ivy in its natural habitat)

No. 3: On their planet, this is a form of humor...

(Doctor, can you do something about this lump in my throat?)

No. 4: There wasn't a big enough block of styrofoam to paint green and place at the Jack-In-The-Box drive-thru lane, so they were forced to do this to a real plant. Ah, nature!

(This is bound to bring in more burger fans)

So you see, there's always a perfectly good explanation for the visual blight we are continually subjected to. I hope this clarifies it for some of you. Just doing my part.

That lopped-off branch in the first photo looks like a couple on our street. It makes me think of a bad haircut that I have to see every day. Why, oh, why? It takes so little effort to do it correctly.

It's just as bad here in Arizona. Desert Spoon trimmed to look like Pineapples, Agave trimmed into little palm tree shapes, Texas Sage in box and circle shapes, Mesquite and Palo Verde trees lion tailed, and the list goes on. While spending all their time with this ridiculous trimming, they don't loosen the wire ties that are choking the trees from staking that should have come up years ago. Boy, you have me going! Happy GTS,Aiyana

It happens in Texas too... I'm not even going to attempt to explain to what happened to a Hollywood Juniper down the street... It was just sitting there minding it's own business and then suddenly, a senseless and totally unwaranted attack...

Hey, all - looks like this post struck a chord with a few people. I'd say it's good to hear that this is not just a local problem, but what's good about that? Now I want to hear about what McCain and Obama are going to do about it. That might be the crucial issue to win my vote.

You should come up here and take a gander at some of the things people do to innocent trees and shrubs. Rather scary the way some people go about hacking off their plants. It seems to be a common phenomenon.

Thank you for your post. In a strange way it actually comforted me. (e.g., another person sticking up for plants/trees)

Some of my neighbors seem to think trees are the enemy. Someone cut down a tree with a 3 foot diameter - a beauty of the neighborhood. Then there were chunks of the tree corpse with a sign "free wood". It made me so sad. Other neighbors hat rack trees. Sigh.

My god! I know I'm becoming a snub, but you should please come drive through my neighborhood--besides flagpoles and infaltable decorations, people use rock mulch, white, along the WHOLE edge o the driveway, straight down to the street, line it with pink brick edging, and put about 4 small, sickly looking shrublike things in them which are burning, wilting, pleading for death. I just read an article about plants being smart, and I wonder if someday they just might have a revolt and prune us.

Billy, what's wrong with these people huh??? I was unfortunate enough to see a Plant Hater purchase the house next door and TOTALLY DESTROY a beautiful garden in a matter of days. I can't post a pic here but I'll send it to you thru flickr! You gotta see it!Roberta

About Billy

Born in Brooklyn, NY and moved to California when I was 8. It was pretty much music until I discovered the amazing art of bonsai, dropped what I was doing and immersed myself in horticulture, design, and now teaching through lectures, freelance garden writing, and television.